Reducing Resentment in Your Relationship

Anger is a normal part of every relationship, whether it is between partners, family, friendships, or work relationships. Still, anger that accumulates and remains unprocessed becomes resentment, something much more corrosive and dangerous to all relationship.

When resentment shows up in a relationship, it’s as if the grave is being prepared for the feelings of love and connection. The relationship may remain in spite of resentment if commitment is built into it, such as a family relationship. But a romantic relationship, such as a marriage, marches towards a slow and painful death with enough accumulated and unprocessed resentment.

If you or your partner have feelings of resentment, these feelings can lead to certain predictable actions. The person feeling resentful may be:

• Less trusting of the other person
• Stop wanting to give as freely in the relationship
• Feel less love or desire for intimacy
• Not want to spend as much together time

As you can imagine, these feelings do not lead to a happy, satisfying relationship. Yet, most people ignore the deteriorating effect on their relationship, trying to continue to have the relationship on top of resentment.

Where Does Resentment Come From?

Resentment is comprised up of old feelings of anger and disappointment. To prevent it from eating your relationship from the inside out, you and your relationship partner need to do something let go of these old feelings.

Uncleared resentment works against the good feelings between you and can be a path to more distance and more negative interaction.  Resolving resentments together, if done right, creates understanding, closeness, trust, and love.

Resolving Resentments 

First of all, talk to your partner about the state of your relationship. Let them know that you notice less closeness, more frustration with each other, less connection. Talk about how and why both of you are carrying around some old frustration, anger and resentment at each other. Ask if they are willing to work through these feelings with you in some honest, calm conversations about how each of you feels. If you get a yes for an answer, you picked a partner who’s going to work with you to make your relationship better.

Resolving resentments may take a while and depends on the length of your relationship and the amount of resentment each one of you is carrying towards the other. For some couples, the process could take months to complete.

The good news is, if you are committed to resolving the resentment clearing correctly, you will be growing closer to each other with each conversation. This means the time of resolving resentments is also a time of positive relationship building, and is a time well spent.

For more information on how resentment can affect a relationship, visit https://onlinetherapywell.com or http://sanjosecouplescounseling.com.

Is Your Partner a Sex Addict?

As a counselor specializing in working with partners who are codependent and in a relationship with an addict, I hear stories every day about how tough it is. Many partners of sex addicts still want to think the best of their spouse. If you are wondering if your boyfriend or husband might be a sex addict, here are some of the most common ways a person learns about a sex addicts behavior.

Many women find out about their partner’s behavior by looking through credit card statements and finding purchases for hotel rooms, dinners, flowers, jewelry, and gifts that they were not a part of and did not know about. Others find their partner’s Facebook and other social media accounts littered with inappropriate comments and sexual innuendos.

Other tell-tale signs include finding business cards or matches from strip clubs in pockets or the car, second phones for calls and texting, and having accounts on various dating and social hookup sites.

A number of women have reported finding stashes of porn on their home computer and have discovered that their partner spends time at home alone to compulsively masturbate. Lastly, and perhaps, the worse sign is when a woman reports getting a sexually transmitted disease and having only been with her partner.

Sadly, the list of red flags goes on and on because all addicts are experts at maintaining a secret life. Most addicts know, intellectually, that they shouldn't be doing what they’re doing, but, because they’re addicted, they cannot stop themselves. Of course, not everyone who engages in the above behaviors is a sex addict. However, if you notice a number of the behaviors listed above and they disturb you, you might want to talk about them with your spouse and even consider couples counseling.

If you find that your partner can easily give up the behavior because he values you and the relationship, he is most likely not a sex addict. But if you find that he tries to stop but cannot or refuses to even try, you might be in a relationship with a sex addict.

If you have been in a relationship with a sex addict for a while, you might be wondering if you are imagining things. This is partially because sex addicts are good at minimizing and rationalizing their behavior. They are usually skilled at deflecting criticism about themselves, in turn implying that you are crazy or imagining things. This is the turning point where you can decide if you want to begin your own recovery process. The process starts with respecting yourself enough to set boundaries and begin taking care of yourself. After that, you can decide if individual therapy and couples counseling might help the situation.

If you would like to learn more about couples counseling and addiction therapy, visit https://onlinetherapywell.com and http://DrRandiFredricks.com.